# REMOTE - Computational determinants of conscious awareness: mental strength, mental contents and higher-order state spaces

- Institution: CERN
- Department: Academic Training Lecture Regular Programme,2021-2022
- Speaker: Stephen Fleming
- Year: 2022
- Level: Graduate
- Language: English
- Subjects: Computer science
- Source: [CERN](https://videos.cern.ch/record/3011630)
- Licence: [CERN](http://copyright.web.cern.ch)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

Abstract:

A fundamental question concerns why we are conscious of, and able to communicate, some aspects of our mental life and not others. This question becomes all the more puzzling in light of computational frameworks that cast perception as an unconscious inference. I will survey the experimental literature on the measurement and quantification of conscious (vs. unconscious) mental states. I will also briefly outline different theoretical positions on consciousness, including global workspace and higher-order theories. l describe one theoretical model of the cognitive machinery supporting awareness– the higher-order state space (HOSS) model. HOSS suggests the subjective intensity of conscious experience is supported by a domain-general magnitude code that tracks the strength or intensity of first-order perceptual representations – a suggestion that dates back to Hume, but which has been largely overlooked in the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness. I will present data from recent behavioural and neuroimaging experiments that find signatures of this content-invariant magnitude code in near-threshold perceptual tasks. These findings are consistent with awareness judgments being supported by an abstract, low-dimensional inference on the presence or absence of perceptual content. A neural code for mental strength is presumably central to communicating and sharing awareness of all types of content with others.

Short bio of the speaker:

Steve is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Sir Henry Dale Fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Principal Investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, and Group Leader at the Max Planck-UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research. Steve received a first class BA in Psychology and Physiology at Oxford University (2003-2006) before completing a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL under the supervision of Ray Dolan and Chris Frith (2006-2011). He was awarded a Sir Henry…

## Lectures

1. [REMOTE - Computational determinants of conscious awareness: mental strength, mental contents and higher-order state spaces](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/cern/3011630/52941958f774), 1 h 11 min (CERN's player)